This Unruly is an evolving web repository of theory and practice related to recombinatory video appropriation practices involving video re-purposing, re-mixing, collage and cut-up techniques. The site includes examples of YouTube clips as well as a literature review of articles and academic papers, which relate to the subject. Content within the site has been organised using a provisional taxonomy that centres on formal aesthetic, creative and experimental features. In doing so this marks a departure from more conventional approaches, which generally seek to locate works according to established art historical developments and stylistic conventions. The site, which was created by Simon Perkins is an extension to posts about the practice of video cut-ups that were initially made to the Folksonomy.co in 2016.

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"Vaporwave isn’t just something you listen to either, it’s something you experience, and experiences include visuals. Vaporwave visual art, simply referred to as 'aesthetics,' is varied but tends to honor some core tenets. If you’re looking at something pink and teal with a marble classical bust and a glitchy Windows 95 logo, you’re probably looking at a vaporwave aesthetic. If you’re watching a YouTube video with a title written in a weirdly soothing stretched out font, you’re probably watching a vaporwave aesthetic.

If you haven’t guessed by now, vaporwave is a bit of a joke, or more accurately, an internet meme. Vaporwave’s trippy immediate artistic ancestor 'seapunk' was a running inside joke on Tumblr during 2011 about fashion and art and music inspired by the ocean. The look and sound of a psychedelic club run by a hipster Ariel from The Little Mermaid is a pretty accurate summation. Neon seapunk imagery even found its way into Rihanna’s 2012 Saturday Night Live performance, confounding many viewers with its colorful and stylish but garish, cheap, and seemingly unprofessional grainy green screen look. The exact difference between seapunk and vaporwave is blurry, but as far as I understand vaporwave trades the aquatic focus for a fascination with the emptiness of aging and/or amateur glossy commercialism. It’s the music playing behind an infomercial for public access purgatory."